We all gathered at Krakow railway station early Thursday afternoon for the 2 hour drive into the High Tatras mountains. Most of us had arrived on morning flights from the UK, but some had already spent some time in Krakow enjoying the beautiful architecture, great hospitality and sampling the local beers. It was great to find I knew some members of the group from a Mont Blanc trip a couple of years ago and we spent some time catching up. I’d led and accompanied many KE trips over the years from 1 week to 4 weeks in length, but this was my first time on a weekend trip. The combination of a fantastic city, Poland’s highest mountain and experiencing a country I’d never visited packed into a 4 day break was really appealing.

After arriving in the High Tatras mountains, we had a nice leg stretch of a walk to the Roztoka hut, nestled in a forest under the mountain of Rysy, our main objective for the weekend. The hut has a real ‘Hansel and Gretel’ feel about it and the welcome we received was fantastic. The dorm rooms were 2 – 6 beds and all had freshly laundered, sheets, pillows and duvets. My sleeping bag liner that I brought along with me as standard for mountain huts wasn’t going to be needed! After a 3 course meal and a couple of pints of beer we all turned in early. It had been a long day and tomorrow was going to be even longer.

An early start was obligatory and the Roztoka hut breakfast was a world apart from the Alpine hut bread, jam and hot drink breakfast. It was a massive spread of different types of bread, spreads, cereals, ham, cheese, scrambled eggs and more than enough food to fuel us for the 1800m of ascent and 6 hours of walking and scrambling to get us to Rysy’s summit, and then the same again to get us back down again. The day started with a lovely gentle ascent through the forest with the occasional grazing deer to arrive at Morzky Oko lake and a view of the route ahead and Rysy summit itself. It looked utterly daunting, but as is often the way in the mountains once we headed up the trail it was actually a lot more straightforward than it looked. The top part of Rysy becomes quite rocky and scrambling skills are needed to get to the summit. All the difficult sections are protected by in situ chains and we had all been issued with helmets, climbing harnesses and via ferrata lanyards so that we could clip into the chains if necessary to provide an extra level of security. After about an hour of following the chains, and under the expert supervision of our guide Antek, we all made it to the airy summit of Rysy (2499m) perched on the Slovenia/Poland border, and of course the obligatory summit hero shots (and my first ever summit selfie!).

The clouds had decided to roll in when we got to the summit, so after a bite to eat on the top, we decided to head back down. For almost the whole way down Rysy, we could see the Morsky Oko lake and the hut there calling to us with its cold beers. The clouds disappeared and the sun came out for our descent and those beers tasted so good after such a big, but oh so satisfying day out on the hill.

The next day despite some achy legs, everybody was up for the 3 hour walk out of the mountains via an awesome viewpoint of Rysy and the High Tatras. A great way to finish our time in the mountains. We had a couple of hours to explore Zakopane, the lively main resort town of the region and then it was back to Krakow for the evening. A guided sightseeing tour and a fantastic final evening meal in Krakow sampling some of the local speciality dishes rounded off an action packed long weekend in Poland. Although I’d just been away 4 days, I was amazed at how much we had managed to fit into such a short break. Before I left I wasn’t sure whether I’d be a fan of KE weekend trips, but I’m a convert now!